'The rise and fall of Sir Conyers Clifford' by Matthew McGinty (NUI Galway).
Sir Conyers Clifford arrived in Connacht in February 1597. His purpose was to take up the position of Governor of Connacht. Clifford task as governor was a difficult one because Clifford arrived in Connacht during the height of the Nine Years War and the province was in near full revolt. To make matters worse for Clifford there was a serious problem in Connacht with a lack of soldiers, munitions and victuals. Clifford would be constantly hampered by insufficient resources during his time as governor and this lack of supplies meant Clifford was often prevented from taking an army into the field. However Clifford, in just over a year, was able to pacify the province. Clifford achieved this by encouraging a number of the Connacht rebels to defect and serve against those who remained in a state of rebellion. My presentation will show how Clifford was able to recruit Connacht rebels to his side and how they helped him subdue the province. By doing this I hope to show how effective the policy of exploiting the fracture nature of Gaelic society and using Gaelic allies to suppress rebellious chieftains could be. However there were potential pitfalls to this policy as Clifford was to find out to his detriment. Clifford’s allies had defected once so they had no qualms about defecting back to the rebels. Some of Clifford’s allies did return to the rebels and this led to Clifford losing control of the province and his death in the Curlew Mountains in August 1599 when he was defeated and killed by the forces of his former allies, Brian O’Rourke and Connor McDermott. By examining Clifford’s downfall my presentation will show that using the help of Gaelic allies was a risk-reward venture that could badly backfire.
The 6th Annual Tudor & Stuart Ireland Interdisciplinary Conference took place at NUI Galway in August, 2016. The conference was generously supported by: an NUI Galway President's Award for Research Excellence (awarded to Prof. Steven Ellis); the Moore Institute, NUI Galway; the Discipline of History, NUI Galway and the Society for Renaissance Studies.
As in previous years the majority of papers were recorded for podcasting by https://soundcloud.com/real-smart-media in association with www.historyhub.ie. There are now more than 140 podcasts from previous Tudor and Stuart Ireland conferences freely available. To access this archive go to www.historyhub.ie/podcasts or visit tudorstuartireland.com